Making Our Own Parrot Toys

April 4, 2010

We have a contractor friend who was kind enough to offer to cut up pieces of his leftover untreated pine two-by-fours when I mentioned that I could use pine scraps for parrot toys. I picked up a small bag of them yesterday and restrung a $15 toy Mika had shredded in a few days. (This was a toy hung on the outside of her cage, which means she had limited access to it. It would’ve lasted even less time if it had been on the inside of her cage.)

I was too lazy and impatient to dye the wood pieces before stringing them up. So here’s the end result:

This toy is held together by bird-safe leather “laces” (vegetable-dyed thin strips of leather) and has pine slats, wooden beads/small bits of plastic straws to separate the slats, and plastic whiffle balls.

Here’s Mika checking it out:

If it doesn’t hold her interest, I may need to dye the wooden slats — I do think bright color has a lot to do with why birds are interested in some toys.

This is our first foray into making a bird toy of this size (although I have replaced parts here and there) so I stuck pretty closely to a toy design that was already a big hit. As time allows, I’ll work on creating more toys from the wooden slats. We still have a lot of pieces left, but do need to drill holes into them and probably dye them.

If you’re on a budget and want to make your own wooden bird toys, run down to the hardware store and get some untreated lumber, find a way to cut them into thin pieces, dye them (optional), and then string them up with bird-safe materials.

As with ANY toy parts, make sure that the components are safe. Be careful about choking or strangulation hazards, opportunities for birds to get themselves caught on or trapped in anything, metal poisoning, etc.

So are you sure when you got to a hardware store that the lumber you get wasn’t definately not treated and not against or did not come into contact with anything poinsous to a bird before you got it? I’m just curious cause I wouldn’t mind making my own slats.

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Welcome!

Welcome to my parrot blog, where I share insights with other and would-be parrot owners on ways to keep their pet birds happy. I'm not a professional trainer or avian expert; these are just my opinions, observations and insights based on my life with Stewie and Mika, and my efforts to do the very best for my birds. I also read voraciously and will share other cool stuff I find related to parrot ownership and training.